Is it ok that women have to change their names when they become parents?

China. Mama Baba

How interesting Sardine, I was just about to look that up myself. At university I studied historical linguistics and we looked at the terms for family members in different Indo-European languages - it's a really good way of tracing language change through the centuries.

When I was about eleven I decided it was ridiculous for my parents to sign cards/letters to me as Mummy and Daddy rather than their given names and instructed them to change over (which they obediently did). I guess this must have been when I first started thinking of them as individuals rather than solely in relation to me.

1. They don't have to
2. It's not just women

look at the words for mum and dad around the world - all very similar!

Oh and yes don't see this as a feminist issue at all TBH.

I also thought that the names for parents around the world are the sounds that young children find it easiest to make and are more in line with the sort of sounds they make when trying to talk.

I do think mama and dada (or umma and gaga or whatever) are easier for young children than doris or apple. My DD2 is very slow to get on with talking and she can say ummy and gaga, but she can't pronounce her sister's name at all (it is not terribly difficult).

OK it's a sample of 2 but I'm sure I have read it on here as well.

But we don't call our son or daughter, 'son' or 'daughter' do we so why does it have to shape the relationship?

My DS often calls me by my christian name and I am perfectly happy with that although one or two people raise their eyebrows at it - I genuinely don't understand why it offends people, I rarely call my 80 year old mother 'mum' or 'mummy', particularly if we are out in public .

duchesse, my MIL does that thing where she calls me "Mammy" in the third person to one of the kids. It drives me nuts! Not only that but she has this way of saying it...... She used to live in England and I think she actually thinks being English is superior to being Irish. So she sort of merges "Mummy" and "Mammy" to an odd kind of "Mommy" which is not English or Irish or even American. I would rather listen to nails being scraped on a blackboard!

AThing, they all call me "Mammy" but when ds1 is talking to me in front of his friends, he calls me "Mum"!

Mummy is not a feminist/anti feminist thing. Most people object to children calling their only Mummy and Daddy by their actual names, it's weird and takes something away from a child that noone else can give.

Perhaps you're right, athing. It was just a reflection of what I've read.

My experience is pretty limited so I'm probably wrong!

I'm just doing this because I like the topic and am putting off some household work ... I'm completely uninvested!

I've known more than a few children who call their parents by their given names. Not a soul has ever thought it weird, and the children are aware that "your mummy" means Jane the female parent.

Maybe it could be thought a feminist issue because of a woman's identity being so bound up in her existence as a mother? Perhaps it is more important for a child to use HER given name - or, at least, for her to use it - to ward off the danger of being subsumed by "Mummy". Maybe it's not so for dads, who are John about 80% of the time and become Daddy exclusively for the children.
Just a ramble.

Of course it's a necessary stage in learning to talk.

But it doesn't mean anything and it bears very little relationship to the first words children say.

There is no reason why babbling should be followed by "Mummy" any more than it should be followed by "Doris". In reality it's most likely to be followed by "apple" or "Peppa".

And, as I said, it takes toddlers longer to need a term for their mother (extension of self) thaOT or other people. So it really doesn't need to be that easy to say.

It's not actually changing your name. It's about your child using the description of what you are. But to counter your OP, what about fathers? How is this a feminist issue?

athing - AFAIK pre-speech (babbling) is recognized as a necessary stage in learning to talk. I dunno ... I'm just repeating what I've read here, but it seems fairly convincing to me.

I don't quite see how there can be an 'absolute' difference between meaningless babble and 'actual words' ... how would babies learn to talk? Obviously every 'ma' or 'da' isn't said with intent behind it - but it seems kinda unlikely any language is going to suddenly adopt 'zyblographic spectrosy' as an alternative title for 'mum', or that if it did, many babies would quickly get their tongues around it.

"There is a reason 'mum/ma' and 'dad/da/fa/pa' are the sounds we use for parents: they are easy for small children to say."

Is that the reason really?

When babies are babbling it's quite clear that they intend nothing by those sounds.

It seems to be far more to do with parental vanity than anything remotely essential to motherhood/fatherhood that those sounds are assigned as parental names.

Dadadadada is an easier sound than Mamamama. I think it's interesting that it is given to fathers rather than the person who is normally still the primary cared at that point.

Either way, from watching my children there is an absolute difference between meaningless and repetitive babble and the use of actual words to mean particular things.

I never flattered/deluded myself that mamamamama meant me. My babies learnt Mommy and Daddy as words just like any other words. They weren't among the first, and in fact it seemed quite late in speech development when they felt the need to have any kind of name for me at all.

The name most people use for me is considerably easier to say than Mommy. So by the ease of use argument it was selfish of me not to use my given name.

I got the impression on that thread that the OP thought that "mummy" would be her new name, whereas I've always thought of it as more of a 'job title'. Same as you would call a police(wo)man "Officer".

IMO there is no more pressure for a woman to be "mummy" to their child than there is for a man to be called "daddy".

And I also think that "changing your name" is a poor description of this - parents do not change their name for everyone, they are simply called by a different name by their children.

Gah. I should remember not to leave pages open for hours before replying! Sorry, hothead, you are right and said it first.

I think actually there is a little more to hecate's point than cultural determination.

There is a reason 'mum/ma' and 'dad/da/fa/pa' are the sounds we use for parents: they are easy for small children to say. A baby trying to talk is going to have much more of a struggle to get his or her tongue around 'Elizabeth' or 'Robert'. I'm not sure how this links to feminism (not saying it doesn't, just not sure how). But I think it'd be important to think quite carefully about the implications of not using 'mum' or 'dad' and IMO there is some sense to feeling odd about it.

Not saying I don't see why women react against being 'mum' to everyone, or the social associations, obviously.

Yup. you are 100% right, AThing. I can't argue with you. How I feel makes no sense at all, I recognise that.

But visualising a little quivering lip is a completely culturally determined invention of your own.

No actual child is crying.

A child who has always known his mother as Marjory won't have a quivering lip. Why would he?

If we didn't make an effort to convince babies that we are "Mummy" and "Daddy", our children would just call us what everybody else calls us, ie our names.

Using special parent names is a custom. Not a natural state of affairs.

Imagining a child's quivering lip because they call their Mum Marjory, and criticising the selfishness of the mother's choice on the basis of that imagining, is no different from imagining the quivering lip of a child as his mother leaves him in childcare to go off to work, or when he finds out his mother and he don't share the same surname, or when he supposedly inevitably gets teased when his classmates realise his parents are gay.

It is a conservative impulse to protect the way things are normally done, based not on evidence or experience, but prejudice.

chipmonkey that you get to be Mammy.

Giving parents titles shapes and reflects the belief system that children are the individual responsibility of the bio patents rather than of the wider community. It is a feminist issue because it is part of the 'blame the mother' discourse.

Giving parents titles shapes and reflects the belief system that children are the individual responsibility of the bio patents rather than of the wider community. It is a feminist issue because it is part of the 'blame the mother' discourse.